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The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.
Thomas Jefferson
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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Purpose
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Abandoned
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Abandon
Protect
More quotes by Thomas Jefferson
If we suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that weapon for what one so cheap to those of whose system of politics morality makes no part?
Thomas Jefferson
I do not like [in the new Federal Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for... protection against standing armies
Thomas Jefferson
The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.
Thomas Jefferson
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson
The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights
Thomas Jefferson
The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.
Thomas Jefferson
Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence, as indolence.
Thomas Jefferson
[I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.
Thomas Jefferson
The federal government is our servant, not our master.
Thomas Jefferson
The equal rights of man and the happiness of every individual are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.
Thomas Jefferson
My principles, and those always received by the republicans, do not admit to removing any person from office merely for a difference of political opinion. Malversations in office, and the exerting of official influence to control the freedom of election are good causes for removal.
Thomas Jefferson
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia.
Thomas Jefferson
If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong.
Thomas Jefferson
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
Thomas Jefferson
Victory and defeat are each of the same price.
Thomas Jefferson
Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.
Thomas Jefferson
Always take hold of things by the smooth handle grateful that they are not worse rather than the rough handle, bitter that they are not better.
Thomas Jefferson
We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.
Thomas Jefferson
No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
Thomas Jefferson
All we can do is to make the best of our friends, love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way what is bad.
Thomas Jefferson